Dr Vino's wine blog

The auction market remains hot, hot, hot! Six magnums of 1985 Romanée-Conti fetched $170,375 at NYWines/Christie’s on March 2nd in New York. That breaks down to…$561.18 an ounce!!

This lot still misses the record $6,400 an ounce that a 1787 Lafitte (sic) fetched in 1985, and the $3,600 an ounce that one bottle of 1787 Chateau d’Yquem got in a January auction. Not often discussed in auction results are charity auctions but it’s hard to forget the four 3-L bottles of Colgin that went for $650,000 at the Auction Napa Valley last year ($1,600 an ounce).

But this lot does beat a set of six DRC 1971 magnums that rolled in at $448 an ounce in January. Is 2006 the year of the wine auction? (yes, for sellers!)

tags: wine | wine auctions

Decanter recently reported on the newest American Viticultural Area (AVA):

Washington’s Rattlesnake Hills will soon become this Pacific Northwest state’s ninth federal appellation.

Appellation?! Journalists, wine makers, and regulators who call AVAs “appellations” are only muddying the already confusing use of terms on wine labels. AVAs only delimit the growing area and don’t control any other aspects of production that French appellations control, such as yields, varietals, and a final blind tasting by a committee of producers. I realize that it is common parlance but it is inaccurate and one of my pet peeves. Sure AVA is a clunky term that deserves its place in the Boring American Acronym Hall of Fame along with SUV, HOV, etc. But if they wanted to call it something else then they should have, um, called it something else.

Whew, got that off my chest! Now just how much delimitation is the new Rattlesnake Hills going to do? “The 68,500 acre (27,721 hectares) appellation has 1,500 acres (607 hectares) under vines.” Whoa! That’s a lotta land–with few vines! This shows another problem with AVAs: they often are more about promise than past performance. Fortunately I’m not the only one who feels this way:

Robin Pollard, the Washington Wine Commission’s executive director, terms the hills a ‘unique viticultural area.’ Richard Boushey of Boushey Vineyards in Grandview, Washington, disagrees.

Urging Washington to reject the AVA petition, Boushey argued: ‘I know of no regional style, specific variety or type of wine that is unique to this proposed area. The granting of this proposal would confuse consumers and undermine the existing Yakima Valley Appellation.’

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While we’re on the subject of AVAs and appellations, I just stumbled on the transcript of a punchy and provocative interview with Rene Renou, the President of the wine committee at INAO, the French office of appellations (and yes, I mean appellations). Check it out here.

tags: wine | appellations | AVA | AOC

While the Oscar winners will undoubtedly be having champagne, what will you be pairing with your favorite Oscar-nominated movie this year? Here are some suggestions from Appellation Wine and Spirits in New York:

“Brokeback Mountain” Feel the expanse of the west with 2004 Shooting Star Washington State Lemberger “Blue Franc”. Soft, medium-bodied red made from the Austrian varietal Blaufränkisch (AKA Lemberger). This offering, made by Jed Steele, has soft red and blue fruit, great acid and soft tannins. $14.99 (find this wine)

“Crash” If you loved Crash, drink Garretson Wine Company Central Coast “G Red” 2003, whose vineyards are just up the highway from sunny L.A. A big red from a field blend of grapes coming from the Central Coast of California. The stelvin closure (i.e., screwcap) ensures no issues with having a corked bottle. $20.99 (find this wine)

“Good Night, and Good Luck” Have a scotch after the evening news. Aged 15 years, Bruichladdich 15 Year Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky is smooth and sophisticated. Butterscotch and crème brulée are some of the notes, finishing with a hint of sea mist. $73.99 (find this wine whisky!)

“Memoirs of a Geisha” You will feel like you are on the set of Memoirs of a Geisha when you drink Daimon Shuzo “Mukune Shadows Of Katano” Nigori Junmai Ginjo sake. This lightly-filtered sake is born from natural spring water. With an impression of sweetness, Shadows is dry with notes of mineral and vanilla. Seared tuna? Yes! $20.99 (300ml) (find this wine sake!)

“Munich” For an intense movie, we suggest a glass of 2002 Domaine du Castel Haute Judée “Grand Vin” Bordeaux blend from a top producer out of Israel. Has an herb-tinged nose with dense, spicy blackcurrant fruit. Big and chewy with nice acidity. $51.99 (find this wine)

For their complete list, check out the web site. I would only add that if you’re pulling for March of the Penguins, make it a mulled wine.

tags: wine | Oscars

Niche marketing in wine is going crazy. In the past year wine producers have released White Lie, a “wine for women” with 9% alcohol (discussed here and here), Working Girl Wines, and Lulu B from France, which is less overtly aimed at women (the syrah is actually not bad for $7).

These wines were supposedly in reaction to high octane, extracted wines and especially ones with names like Tait, the Ball Buster. Now, there’s Cleavage Creek complete with plunging neckline on the label. As if that wasn’t obvious enough, Kendall-Jackson is now making Ray’s Station Vineyards a “Hearty Red Wine for Men.”

And now? Gay Men’s Food and Wine Pairing. OK this one is a social event but I’m sure wine marketers are cooking up something for this demographic.

Hmm, when will they make one for heterosexual dads who like to travel? Or start splitting shop displays by gender?

tags: wine | niche marketing | ball buster

Sun, good food and wines, the beach, crumbly old ruins — who doesn’t like the South of France? That’s what the organizers of a new initiative to put the wines of the region under a new banner. A blue banner that is (see right).

While this is a promising idea for reinvigorating exports as well as overcoming the jumble of appellations (AOC) in the area, I’ll be watching for defection.

The most crucial aspect to threaten this new branding, about a week old, is the fact that appellation wine producers expect a premium over vin de pays producers yet this unites them in the same category. If the AOC producers in the area see the blue banner dragging down their prices, they’ll be the first to scrap it. Stylistically the wines are not always similar since most AOC wines are blends while the vdp wines must be 100% varietal.

But the vin de pays, which outnumber the AOC wines by 4 to 1 in terms of volume, do well in exports thanks to grape names on the labels. If AOC producers in the region saw any value in adding similarity to the labels of the vdp wines, varietal names should be the first thing to add. After all, the US has yet to see its first shop specializing in the wines of the region so more information leads to better educated consumers.

tags: wine | French wine | Languedoc

George Bush will take a 13 hour plane trip to New Delhi today to spend three days in the world’s largest democracy. If the Teetotaler-in-Chief stopped to look at the Indian wine industry, what would he find?

Most importantly, that the industry has friends in high places. The Minister of Agriculture, Sharad Pawar (photo right), is a grape grower who even has a the Sharad seedless grape named after him. He is a champion of the view that wine is a drink of moderation and recently tried to get wine classified as food and be as easy to sell as soft drinks. His efforts were rebuffed. However, his home state of Maharashtra has doubled tariffs on imported wine (states with the ability to add tariffs!), making local grape sources more attractive and more difficult for wineries to pass off Chilean wine as their own.

Viv Menon recently won a Geoffrey Roberts Award to travel to India to examine the wine industry. In his comments on jancisrobinson.com, Menon calls Grover‘s wines “quite incredible.” Michel Rolland is a consultant. Indage has opened a wine bar on the premises with no beer or spirits available and she is surprised to find some people there have traveled over an hour for a glass of wine. He describes Sula as “the slickest of all in terms of marketing” and that they have good viticultural practices to boot. The most promising sign for consumers he writes is that the Oberoi hotel in New Delhi now has an enoteca.

While wine gets frequent mention in the Bible promoters of wine in India can find support even in the Bhagwat Gita: “Yea! those who learn The threefold Vedas, who drink the Soma-wine, Purge sins, pay sacrifice — from Me they earn Passage to Swarga.”

tags: wine | India | Indian wine | Sharad Pawar

The hot button-issue of wine and numbers is at the heart of what we discuss in my critics class at NYU. Alder Yarrow at Vinography recently dug up a 2004 article by WR Tish that sparked a vibrant discussion. In case you missed the very good (92 points? haha) discussion, I recommend it.

What do you think?

tags: wine | wine criticism

When Mrs. Vino and I went on our first trip to wine country in Northern California in 1995, I had high hopes of scoring some real bargains by buying directly from the winery. We drove up and down Route 12 in Sonoma, stopping at many wineries that then had free tastings. We pulled into BR Cohn and tried the wines and olive oils of Bruce Cohn and admired his gold and platinum records on the wall from his days as manager of the Doobie Brothers.

We bought a few bottles there and at other wineries. Even though I was frustrated to find hardly any discounts, I still insisted we wouldn’t be able to find many of these gems back in Chicago. So we both lugged a half a case under each arm through SFO and back to Chicago. Then I found many of the “gems” for sale at Sam’s. That was when I learned to never schlep wine–that’s what UPS is for–and certainly never make someone else schlep wine for you! (And now thankfully we have the internet too, which can locate wines with a click)

Those were some of the memories we had last night as we uncorked our B.R. Cohn 1993 Olive Hill Cabernet Sauvignon that we purchased from the winery on that trip 11 years ago. For the first time we got around to participating in the seventh edition of Open That Bottle Night (OTBN).

The wine itself was excellent and well beyond my expectations. Though not as vibrant a purple as it was in the tasting room, the aromas and flavors were still complex, with tobacco, leather, blackcurrant, faint chocolate all mingling into a long finish. Fortunately, we still have one more bottle.

What were some tales from your OTBN last night? If you missed it, pull a special cork sometime soon. The spirit of OTBN is about actually drinking fun bottles, instead of just looking at them (or worse, forgetting about them). Now that’s an idea we can all raise a glass to!

tags: wine | OTBN | BR Cohn